Sunday, April 8, 2012 Salt Lake City, Utah

Whew!!!  It has been almost a week since my last post and have we been busy.  Since my last post, we have traveled from Phoenix, up to Las Vegas, and then on to Salt Lake City, Utah, where we are presently located.  We had a great time in Phoenix, getting together with folks we haven't seen in far too long.  It is a wonderful thing to have a great family, and we both thoroughly enjoyed the time we spent with family members.

On Thursday morning, we met up with friends from northern NY who flew into town on business.  We had a great time at breakfast with Bruce and Jill and the girls and appreciate them taking time out from their business to spend time with us.

Thursday afternoon we left Phoenix with sad hearts.  We love the warm weather, the sunny skies and the great times we had, but our schedule was looming and off we went.  Our stop that night was Las Vegas, at the KOA located by Circus Circus.

This was our first experience at camping in downtown Las Vegas, and it was certainly interesting.  Somehow we got the address of the KOA entered into the GPS wrong and ended up driving the coach down some dark and narrow streets.  Just as we were about to panic, I saw the yellow KOA sign and we were saved.  The campground is mostly blacktop with full hookups.  The "sites" are large enough, but close together as is typical for KOA.  The big draw of course, is the proximity of the casino.  After getting registered and set up, we walked across the parking lot and into the casino for dinner.  We went to the buffet and ate way more than we should have, especially from the dessert bar.  After that we walked around inside and outside.  We were sitting and watching the crowd go by when a ruckus sounded above our head.  To our surprise, there was a flying acrobat show starting right over out head.

We just sat there watching  as the acrobats flew through the air.  Kind of neat as an unexpected surprise.  After that, we walked back to the coach and went to sleep as we had driven a long way that day and we were tired.

The next morning we broke camp and took off heading north towards Utah.  It was during this drive that we got to see scenery that has to rate as the most beautiful and awe inspiring I have ever seen.

Unfortunately, my camera cannot do justice to the scenery.  You will just have to see it for yourself.  Trust me though, it is worth the drive.

Also unfortunately, our Jeep continued it's slide into oblivion.  Maybe, just maybe it's time to think about replacing old reliable.  With about 195000 miles on the odometer, and another 80000 being towed, things just don't work as well as they used to.  Friday afternoon, as we were driving up I-15, a passing car honked and waved at us, pointing toward the back of the motorhome.  I looked in the rearview monitor and to my surprise, there was smoke billowing out of the hood of the jeep.  I immediately pulled over, grabbed the fire extinguisher, and ran back to the car.  I raised the hood and realized that the smoke was from hot oil smoking from the front differential, and the smoke was slowing down, rather than growing.  I climbed under the car and saw that there was some kind of problem with the drive shaft.  I pulled out the tool box, and removed the front drive shaft.  On the jeep, the front wheel drive mechanism has a transfer case that sends power to the front wheels through a driveshaft.  When I pulled out the driveshaft, I noticed that the pinion gear on the end was missing.  I then removed the back cover from the differential and there was the gear, laying on the bottom of the case, with some parts slightly bent.

With the gear removed, I reinstalled the cover, added some 90 wt. gear lube, and stuffed a tennis ball into the hole where the driveshaft used to be to keep the oil from splashing out.  After that, we continued on our way to the Nephi Utah Flying J, our original destination.  We pulled in there after dark and crashed for the night.  It had been a looooooong and stressful day.

In the morning, we woke up and I took the pups outside to take care of business and saw yet another breathtaking sight.

In the distance was a beautiful snowcapped mountain range.  Wow!  I could get to like this place!

After breakfast at...........you guessed it...........Denny's, we hit the road again for our last leg, about 80 miles to Salt Lake City.  We will be staying there for about a week to attend a world missions conference, to catch up with some old friends and make some new ones.  We will be talking more about that in future posts.  Needless to say, this has been an eventful trip that we will long remember.

One last comment, one of our dear friends, Jim, and his family are camping this week at Disney in Florida and apparently he is thoroughly enjoying his stay there:

Until next time, safe travels.

Larry